


The Best Laid Retirement Plans

by equals_eleven_thirds



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, because Gertrude is too badass to just die like a normal person ofc, but she's not exactly dead, is this all an elaborate headcanon about Gertrude's ghost? yes!, the graphic violence is more graphic descriptions of pain? it gets weird because magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equals_eleven_thirds/pseuds/equals_eleven_thirds
Summary: Gertrude Robinson had a plan to kill Jonah Magnus. Her plan did not succeed. Gertrude Robinson had another plan, to save herself and everyone in the Institute. Her plan... did not succeed?Or, Gertrude is haunting the Archives. Or maybe she is the Archives. It's complicated.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 64





	1. broken nature's social union

Antonio Blake _(fake name, terrified young man, afraid of what his powers mean, doesn_ _’t know what to do)_ writes her fate down on paper, and Gertrude can only think, _Right. Looks like it will hurt. Nice to have some confirmation._

It’s true, what she tells Elias _(or the thing wearing his body)_ ; she isn’t planning on dying. Not exactly. She does not add that she isn’t planning on letting anyone else _(except ~~Elias~~ ~~James~~ **that smug bastard** ) _die, either. He wouldn’t believe her anyway. _She_ wouldn’t believe her, in his place. Not after she sacrificed so many _(Michael, Emma, Eric, Gerard, Adelard, Jan, Agnes, names and names and names_ _…)_ to stop the rituals. Rituals that never would have succeeded, apparently. People who didn’t need to die _(who she didn_ _’t need to kill)_.

Which is why she isn’t going kill anyone else tied to the Institute. Because there’s no one else working in the Archives (she made sure of that herself), but there are still so many people in the library, artefact storage, research—hell, even the accountants and janitors have Jonah Magnus’ rotten hands squeezing around their oblivious hearts. And Gertrude doesn’t have the time to carve out all of their eyes. At least not without being… _Seen._

So she has had to make. Well. Other arrangements.

It isn’t written on her skin like Mary’s book; not enough power, far too obvious. Something like her bond to Agnes might have worked, but she isn’t about to risk asking the Web for another _favour_. No, Gertrude had to construct her own little… ritual _(and does that thought make her want to laugh or vomit or_ _…)_. She built it from cobbled-together blueprints; the fire that never really stopped scorching her lungs, the pattern of a broken circle, lines of Sanskrit in blue ink, a handful of books an old man brought her, the words in the Archives and the tunnels beneath.

Half of it is in her—her bones her blood her heart her head her _soul_. The other half needs the stones of the panopticon and the body of Jonah Magnus.

Unfortunately, Elias is just a little too clever, and her old limbs are a little too slow. He sees through her first distraction, interrupts her second, and she should be down in the panopticon while he puts out the fire up here, but instead she’s grousing at him and choosing her words and giving him just enough of her plan to let him draw his own conclusions until—

Getting shot doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. Neither do the second and third bullets. What _does_ hurt is just after her last breath, when the incomplete ritual _begins_ itself.

A dead body shouldn’t be able to hurt this much, but Gertrude is more aware of pain now than she ever was when she was alive. Even when she’d tied herself to Agnes—she’d burned from the inside out, but she hadn’t been able to feel it like _this_. The living can’t possibly be conscious of the agony of individual molecules trying to shred themselves to pieces. The living don’t churn within their own bones as a terrible, silent scream tears through their marrow. The living don’t pour out of three bullet holes, a stream of blood that is _still yours_ and _still you_ even as it leaves your body, each and every blood cell searing with _pain_ and _need._ The living don’t feel a half-finished ritual trying to twist in on itself _(twist in on you)_ for something, anything that could be its other half.

_Panopticon._

The stones she needs are not there, but there is something. Her desk. Her chair. The floor and walls of the Archive. The tunnels just underneath.

_Jonah Magnus._

…well.


	2. but house or hald

For the first _( ~~weeks?~~ ~~months?~~ ~~minutes?~~ ) _while, her mind is… _scattered_ isn’t the word, because she isn’t _many_ , she is _all_. _Stretched_ , maybe. Unspooled into long, thin threads, pulled out and around until she covers the whole building, until she is the whole building, until she can _thinkfeelbe_ **know** every piece of the Institute at once.

_a wobbly chair in the library, a pen under a desk in artefact storage,_ _“just give me a second Pat I’ll be right over,” a crack in a door frame that no one has noticed yet, fingers tapping on a stone wall, a phone charger left over the weekend, “Hey Tim when did you get that,”_ **_pain_ ** _thrumming through ~~her~~ ~~the Institute~~ **her**_

What thrums through her now is not just the agony of ripping herself apart. It is the pain of rending flesh _and_ of cauterizing a wound; of shattering bones _and_ binding broken shards together; of fire in her lungs _and_ of choking her breath to smother the flames. She is **destroyed** and agonizingly pieced back together, all at once and forever.

She loses herself again in _Knowing_ , and she is almost glad.

_“on the fifth shelf, you’ll need a ladder,” 456 pieces of gum under the library tables, a spot of rust inside a pipe in the women’s bathroom on the second floor, 457, a mouse chewing through the ethernet cable for computer 20B in research, “Hannah can you help me find this book,” dried_ **_blood_ ** _in the seams of **her** **desk**_

It’s lucky, really, that Elias is too scared of her to try Seeing into her mind, even post-mortem. If he had, he might have worked out what she’d done. He might not have left her blood on her desk, pooling and sinking into the wood while the police went over the crime scene. He might not have dragged her body with his bare hands as he laid her to rest _(ha)_ beneath the Institute. He certainly wouldn’t have left tapes full of statements read in her own voice right next to her body.

_Lucky_ , because those pieces of her _(of a patchwork thing of desperation and substitutions)_ give her drifting mind _( ~~anchors~~ ) _tethers. Rocks and reefs in the endless overwhelming sea of _Knowledge_ , just enough to catch her mind and let her _focus_ , for a moment at a time. Moments that **_hurt_** even more. Moments she needs, if she is going to be stronger. If she is going to be herself.

And she does need to be herself. If this is going to _work_.

_Elias smiles smugly over his appointment book_

she Sees the threads tying each Institute employee ~~to him~~ to _her_

_a piece of tinsel behind a chair from a holiday party three years ago,_ _“Ask Ralph he was the last one I saw at,” a few seconds of music loud in the library before headphones are jammed in_

_her tapes shift and rattle in their box_

she Knows the words being read and the new shapes they force the tunnels into

_two ounces of rum in a bottle hidden in a filing cabinet, that fluorescent bulb was changed 215 days ago,_ _“Rosie please give this paperwork to,” one page placed upside down in file 0912806_

_Leitner finds her body and stares for 3.7 seconds before turning away_

she remembers she is _Gertrude Robinson_

_a cigarette butt dropped next to an ashtray,_ _“excuse me how do I get to,” a forgotten sandwich in the back of the breakroom refrigerator, three umbrellas dripping in the coatroom, someone is sitting at her_ **_desk_ **

…someone is sitting at her desk.

She wonders _who is he?_ and it’s the clearest thought she has had in… it’s the clearest thought she has had. And then she doesn’t wonder, because she knows him, a researcher, she spoke to him once or twice… John, no, Jonathan… something.

And then she doesn’t wonder, because she Knows him. Jonathan Sims. The _Archivist_.

Of course Jonah would replace her _(of course the Eye would replace her, it **needs** an Archivist, Jonah just needs a tool), _she should have expected this, but so soon? _(is it soon? ~~how do you know?~~ ) _She needs more time, more focus, more power, to become something more than the silent, Knowing _(useless)_ walls of the Institute…

_Oh._ But that’s what the Archivist is, isn’t he? The pupil of the Eye, the center of Seeing, the mouth to feed its… _beating heart._

_(Is that what she_ _’s doing?)_ Her mind is clearer now, with Sims sitting in her chair, than it has been since she died months ago _(and now she **Knows** it_ _’s been months now, fourmonthsoneweekthreedayselevenhourstwenty-threeminutes)_. _(Is that what she is now?)_ She’s still aware of the Institute, but most of her _consciousness_ is circling her office, focusing on Sims, _thinking_ about the Archivist. _(Is this what she wants to be?)_

~~EliasJonah~~ Elias is still in his office, still pulling the strings, still working on his own plans to end the world. This is what Gertrude _has_ to be.

_a book left in the lost and found, a hole in the hallway carpet,_ _“has anyone seen my blue pen, it was,” a half-eaten candy bar gathering dust and mold in a desk drawer_

Her mind drifts, even with an Archivist around, but Jonathan Sims is a _stronger_ focus than her others. He and his assistants _( ~~three assistants, each meeting an unpleasant~~ **focus**.) _wander around ~~her~~ _the_ Archives, and her drowning mind finds handholds. It’s not _enough_ , but it will do.

_(So. She watches. She listens. She waits.)_

_Click._

“Test… Test… Elias, if you hear this…”

_she is spools of tape spinning on reels, she is coils of wire conducting electricity, she is a magnetic field capturing **voice** and **fear** and **power** , she is feeding and growing and Knowing and becoming and_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Writing about a character who is too unfocused to do things. 
> 
> Also me: Too unfocused to write the story. The irony... But! I finished eventually!
> 
> btw I forgot last time, but you can find me over on tumblr at equalseleventhirds, where I post lots of things about lots of things but lately TMA.
> 
> (Also I decided to start adding chapter titles, all of them are from "To A Mouse" by Robert Burns, the origin of the phrase "the best laid plans of mice and men." In case you were wondering about that.)

**Author's Note:**

> This happened for several reasons, but the two main ones are: first, Oliver's statement didn't match Gertrudes death; and second, I think it's hilarious if Gertrude is just. Around. Listening in. Putting up with her replacement.
> 
> Also I'm just very excited about TMA, I got super into it and now I'm writing fic for the first time in years!


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